


As under a green sea, I saw him drowning

by middlemarch



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier & Related Fandoms, Rebecca 2020
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, F/M, Frank Crawley was a soldier under his command, Honeymoon, I think the narrator has a Welsh first name, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, South of France, if Maxim is an unreliable narrator, in which Maxim de Winter is a WWI veteran, the only surviving member of a group of friends, unusual and rarely spelled correctly, who was Rebecca?, wwi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27269944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They drove from one village to the next with no clear itinerary. He'd bought the camera in Monte Carlo. The film was precious, not easily obtained once they went further from the coast, into the hills.
Relationships: Maxim de Winter/Narrator (Rebecca), Maxim de Winter/Rebecca de Winter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 12





	As under a green sea, I saw him drowning

There were no photographs from Le Bar sur Loup. After another blissful, exquisite night, Maxim had taken little at breakfast, hardly finishing his first cup of very hot, very black coffee, and had muttered, “just another of my bad heads, you needn’t worry,” and retired to their room. The heavy draperies were drawn against the bright sun.

“Off you go, explore for me. Mind you’re back by tea-time,” he’d said, turning on his side. Facing away from her, his bare back nothing like it had been in the moonlight.

The town was known for its bitter oranges, but it wasn’t the season for the festival. She’d tucked her sketchbook in her satchel and had told herself it wasn’t anything to fret about, just a headache. Anyone might have one.

*

She bought something like eau de cologne in Haut-de-Cagnes, though it smelt more strongly of rosemary and bergamot than she was used to. She wasn’t used to much, Mrs. Van Hopper had said that often enough, so she thought the dusty little bottle of scent would do. She soaked her handkerchief in it, one of a dozen Maxim had bought her when she admitted she was never had one when she needed it, and stroked it across his forehead. He sighed a little and she noticed the silver at his temples, the way the exhalation showed how tightly he’d pressed his lips together. 

“Poor darling,” she murmured. “The sun was too much for you.”

“Rained all night, nothing but mud. Shells,” he said. The streets were dry and the sky a blue unfamiliar with clouds. He’d had a bad dream. Shortly before dawn, he’d called out and she hadn’t known what else to do but take him in her arms. He’d settled down, his head on her breast, almost like a boy. He hadn’t wept but he shook as if he had.

*

“Don’t!” he exclaimed as she laid her hand on his bare forearm, having admired the way his skin turned golden brown under the French sun, the dusting of hair making her catch her breath a little. She jerked back, clasping her hands together as if she was a nun at prayer.

“Sorry, darling. You mustn’t fret. I can be a little jumpy. Come here, let me,” he said, the apology becoming an entreaty except that he always sounded sure of her once he’d seen her eyes. There was nothing remarkable about them, which she’d said to him, smiling shyly when he replied she was too young to appreciate the clarity of her own gaze, the singular grace of her candor. He spoke that way sometimes, surprising her, almost poetical; when she’d said something to that effect, he’d laughed.

“Me, a poet? What romantic nonsense, you dear little thing! I haven’t read a poem since 1918.”

*

“You’ve such a marvelous tranquility about you,” Maxim said and she knew it was a compliment. And that he was wrong. He thought stillness meant serenity, he thought that sitting for hours with a sketchbook in her lap was some sort of contentment, when she knew all the time that she could never draw half as well as her father and he’d never mastered a willow tree. She knew Maxim thought her easily placated as a child, sweets or blossoms delighting her, not understanding her delight was in being observed for the moment. Observed and deemed worthy of a gift. She knew enough not to say any of this to him and after one disastrous moment, not to ask him to brush her hair when she sat at the little dressing-table the landlady had shoved under the window that overlooked the hills.

“No poppies,” he’d said when she’d picked up the gaily trimmed straw hat, intending to put it on and preen for him, making him laugh at her silliness. “Hate the sight of them.”

He’d brought her some late roses after looking at her face, had taken her cheeks in his two hands and gazed at her for a long while before he’d begun kissing her, earnest and then driven, his eyes curiously dark. They hadn’t slept until dawn and she was foggy-headed all the next day, making him smile at her clumsiness. He’d said her name when he came, almost getting it right.

*

When they came to Manderley, she found drifts of red poppies, scarlet splashed out almost all the way down to the sea. When she asked the assistant gardener about it, he’d shrugged.

“Mrs. de Winter wanted them. Mrs. de Winter as was, madam.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a poem by Wilfrid Owen.
> 
> I'll admit it, I watched the 2020 remake and found myself shaking my head at the choices that were made (and that mustard/banana suit!) so did my own reboot, in which Max de Winter is (like Tolkien) the only surviving friend of a group who joined up as young officers in 1914. If he has a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, his perception of Rebecca is potentially compromised. What if she wasn't as bad as he makes her out to be? What if there is no hero, no heroine, no villain? 
> 
> Also, I have always been fascinated by the name of the unnamed narrator. Given the little we have to go on (it's an unusual and beautiful name that is rarely spelled properly) and building off her feeling of being an outsider, I think it is Welsh and my top choices are Bronwen or Cerys. Her surname may be Jones for good measure.
> 
> My casting would have been Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders, Dunkirk) for Maxim and Eloise Smythe (Harlots) for the narrator. Kristin Scott Thomas can stay as Danvers and Keely Hawes as Bea. James McAvoy as Frank Crawley because this is my dream-casting.


End file.
